


Torn

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Stumbling [1]
Category: Castle
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fire, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She's just wrapped her hands around it. Control. The thing that lets her put one foot in front of the other when the hem of his coat catches on something wicked. The smoking remains of something she might have loved."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Two-shot insert for Boom! (2 x18)

 

* * *

 

 

She's only just found it. Only just slammed the door on terror and loss and guilt that some part of her knows is wrongheaded and found the sweet spot that makes it ok to lean on him. To have his arm around her and surrender to the fact that he's lifting her over one burning thing after another.

She's just gotten there. Made a joke and everything, and—thank God—he picks right up.

_Are you in any pain?_

_Well, not nearly as much as you. It's killing you, isn't it?_

_What?_

_Having to wait this long to tell me how you banged down the door._

_You want me to start from the beginning?_

She's just wrapped her hands around it. Control. The thing that lets her put one foot in front of the other, when the hem of his coat catches on something wicked. The smoking remains of something she might have loved.

There's a rending sound, even above the roar of a world ablaze. It jerks her away from him. Out of his arms and very nearly topples her. But he's there, kicking at the flames and catching her. Pulling her free, and his eyes are wild and panicked in the firelight.

It's just a moment. A terrible moment and then they're past it. They have to be. The fire licks higher and higher, and it's not a sob that chokes her. Not _just_ a sob. It's cruel, stinging smoke clawing at her insides. Clawing at his throat as he says her name, over and over, terrified and disbelieving as he tries to move them along faster. It's a world ablaze, and they have to go.

They do. They make it to the street, already crowded with squads and unmarkeds. With uniforms and Ryan and Esposito calling out as they race up the block. They make it to the street, and it takes him too long to let go, even though there's someone hovering with spare clothes. Even though there's a paramedic listing all the things that might be killing her even now. It takes her too long to let go, even though she should.

She does, though. She finds a way and even manages a smile and a strange little wave as someone she doesn't recognize swings the double doors at the back of the ambulance shut so she can change.

He waves back, looking lost. Looking like he's not past _any_ of it, even though he has to be. They both have to be.

* * *

 

She's hurrying. The high-up windows have her in an awkward crouch, her body curled in on itself, as if someone might slip away from the nightmare outside to peek at her, filthy and battered as she is. It's absurd, but she turns away, hopping into the baggy borrowed sweats, then spinning sharply, one leg in, one leg out, when she can't bear having her back to the doors anymore.

The next part is worse. Her fingers are hopeless at the buttons of his coat, trembling hard enough that every joint aches, and the idea of baring her skin, even for a second, is awful. She tries at first to work one shoulder out and her arm into the sweatshirt almost in the same moment, but she's clumsy with pain and shock and the rapid fade of adrenaline.

She finally jerks both arms free at once. The coat falls past her hips to the corrugated floor, scuffed and boot stamped. She stoops for it, appalled and sorry. She snatches it up, trying to step free at the same time, but it catches. The long, narrow flutter of fabric catches under the wheel of the gurney. It jerks free entirely, a long strip from the placket all the way to side seam, just gone.

He's nearby. Nodding with his head tipped toward the firefighter to catch every rapid-fire word, but he turns as she bursts through the doors and practically tumbles to the pavement, clutching the coat in her arms. Holding fast to the ruined piece.

"Beckett!"

He leaves the firefighter scowling after him. Holds his hands out as if to catch her, even though she's already on the ground. Already making her way the short distance to him. The paramedic calls out. He tries to catch her, but she shoulders past.

They nearly crash into each other. Momentum and urgency making it hard to stop, but she lifts her arms, the coat spread across them, and he pulls up short.

"It's ruined," she blurts, spilling it into his embrace. Taking his hand and closing it around the wide scrap. He doesn't seem to take it in. Doesn't even seem to notice he's holding it as his eyes roam over her, wincing at the blood still trickling from her scalp. She says it again. "I ruined it. I'm sorry."

"Beckett?" He blinks, registering she's said something, but not grasping it at all. He stares down at the coat. Opens his fist with effort and tries to put the pieces together.

"I'm _sorry,_ Castle."

It's anguished. Worse than saying nothing at all. Worse than ruining it in the first place. She sees that as he swallows hard and tries to find it again. The sweet spot where they prop each other up and get _through_ this.

But they're hustling her away long before he does. Two sets of hands, at least, tugging at her. Turning her toward the ambulance. Scolding and forcing her feet to move as she twists back to look at him. Jordan's voice. Montgomery's, and then shocking pain. Nausea and the corrugated floor rising up when she catches sight of the blisters winding a path up her forearm, blood from a nasty gash just below the elbow twisting like a river between them.

She closes her eyes and breathes. Tunes out the paramedic's monotone as he tells her it's not serious. None of it's serious, and that's nothing short of a miracle.

She closes her eyes and opens them and he's there, just beyond the doors. He slips his arms into the coat—the ruined coat—and pulls it closed over his chest. He gives her a slightly glazed smile and a half-runway turn.

She laughs. More than an edge of hysteria in it, but it catches him, too. His shoulders rise and fall. A real breath. The first one he's had in a long while, she thinks, and it's something.

_Not ruined_ , he mouths and goes back to work.

* * *

 

He's wearing a different coat when he comes back to the precinct. Of course he is. It's why he went home. Not just the wreck she's made of the hem, but everything. Smoke and soot. Her blood, probably. God knows what else.

Of course he has a different coat, but it ruins the effect entirely. The normalcy he's going for with the usual tray. The usual two cups with the usual names scrawled on the side. _Beckett_ today, not _Kate_. Not some silly fictional heroine, like he sometimes does. Definitely not _Nikki_.

"Better," he says. He gives her an appraising look, up and down, as she descends the stairs. "Not that you weren't working the sweats and windbreaker look."

"You, too."

She grabs the coffee and raises it in toast, but her hands shake and he has to take it back from her before she burns herself. Before she adds to the array already hidden beneath the bandages.

"Kate . . ." He steps close, his voice low and his brow furrowed in concern, but she can't. She just _can't._

"You, too," she says again. Loud this time. Too loud to be any kind of friend to normal. "Better."

* * *

 

She's not angry with him. She's not angry with Montgomery or even Jordan Shaw, but she plays at it. She keeps her body tight and silent. Coiled, with manufactured fury at the ready, because it's a familiar thing to keep her upright. Because it's how she copes.

But his home undoes her. His family undoes her. _He_ undoes her with his so-very-not-casual show of faith, leaving her alone with his daughter while he fetches things they don't need.

Cocoa and twenty minutes and she's left with nothing but shame-faced admissions, pushing the reassurance he offers away with both hands.

_You were right to chase after Dunn._

_And Agent Shaw was right to kick me off the case . . . I'm too close to it._

And she is. Too close to save her own skin or know what's right anymore. She's too close to _him._ Too close to everything between them that's suddenly breaking the surface, and the moment she leaned on him seems far away. Half a nightmare, though he inches them back toward it, that place—that moment—when he takes some of the weight and it's ok to let him.

He tries, anyway, but it's more than she can bear. There's no work to snap her back into the right lines if she falters now. No home to hide herself away in. There's nothing to stop her from falling entirely, so she runs.

She says goodnight.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: "He's worried about her, here and now. Worried that she's lying there alone, her eyes fixed on an unfamiliar ceiling and a litany of the dead crowding her mouth. That she's breaking to pieces over every thing she's lost in the last twelve hours."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Second chapter. I'm afraid there's an epilogue. I really, really didn't mean for there to be.

* * *

 

 

He's not used to worrying about her. Not like this. Not at all, really.

It's funny when he thinks about it. Not _ha-ha_ , but odd. Troubling, or it should be. The cognitive dissonance it takes _not_ to worry about thugs and high-speed chases and desperate people with nothing left to lose. The high probability of something lethal behind every door she kicks in, but it's true. He doesn't worry.

To him, she's absolutely larger than life. He trusts her skills. Her instincts, and if there are days he'd like to shake her for the risks she takes with herself, there's Ryan and Esposito to think of most of the time. There's the deadly serious vow he knows she makes to herself—to everyone in her charge that they'll make it out alive and whole—and he just doesn't. He doesn't worry about her like that.

Which isn't to say Dunn isn't a game changer. It isn't to say he's not knee-weakeningly grateful that Montgomery backed his insane pronouncement. Knee-weakeningly grateful that she actually agreed. That she's _here_ , safe and sound.

Safe, anyway. Sound, he's not so sure about, and it's unnerving. How quiet she's been. How still and small and . . . brittle. Not fragile. Never fragile, but she's stiff and sharp edged. She startles at the smallest things and stares off at nothing, like there's no anchor for her at all, now that every second—every iota of her focus—isn't taken up with work.

He's worried about her, here and now. Worried that she's lying there alone, her eyes fixed on an unfamiliar ceiling and a litany of the dead crowding her mouth. That she's breaking to pieces over every thing she's lost in the last twelve hours.

He's worried about her in retrospect. He thinks back to Coonan. To little Angela Candela and the way he's marveled at how resilient she is in the face of the worst the world has to offer. He's worried she's been brittle like this all the while—retreating behind closed doors when the weight of all her losses takes her—and he's only just noticed.

* * *

 

He won't sleep. He's known that since his head hit the pillow. The darkness is bad enough, and he sees flames whenever he closes his eyes. Almost worse, he sees her shoulders jerk three times, her eyes wide and staring as Gloria Rodriguez dies on the other end of the line.

He won't sleep, so he gets up. He slips from the bed and labors to keep his steps silent. He gives in to a not-like-him compulsion to check the front door. To peer through the blinds and catch the reassuring prowl of the marked car, circling and circling.

There's light here. The wall sconces dimmed to almost nothing, the soft under-cabinet strips likewise. And the full-on over-sink light, even though it bugs him. Even though on nights when sleep won't come, he's sure it's that one particular thing keeping him up when his mother or Alexis forgets to switch it off.

He was thinking of her, of course. Thinking of her as he moved carefully around, not wanting her to feel lost in unfamiliar dark. He'd agonized as he'd fiddled with the dimmers. With this switch and that. Rejecting table lamps as too obvious—too likely to make her feel like a stranger—but now it doesn't seem like enough. Now the whole place feels bleak and cavernous. All shadows, and he wants every bulb in the place burning.

He gropes for the chain of the floor lamp. Urgent and anything but silent. Forgetting that part, as his knee clangs against the upright and he stubs his toe on the chunky clay vase that sits beside it. The light comes on at last, and it's a vision and a heart-stopping nightmare at once.

She's there. She's sitting on the couch—in the exact middle of it.

"Beckett." He breathes her name out. A prayer of thanksgiving. Relief flooding him as he realizes how much of him still doesn't believe he saved her. Still doesn't believe she's not gone from the world. Lost to him.

She looks up, startled. Wincing at more than just the sudden light, and he doesn't know how he missed the smell before. Smoke clogging the air, because she's holding his coat. Worrying the ragged edge with her fingers, and he can't even think where she found it. Can't remember where he left it in his haste to get changed and back to her.

"It's ruined," she says. Muttering. Perseverating. "It's ruined, Castle."

* * *

 

He's not sure what to do at first. She knows him. She says his name and nods mechanically as he asks her things. She even murmurs something like _thank you as_ he switches off the light again, just when he's wondering if it's right or wrong.

"You couldn't sleep?"

A nod from her that's shadows from where he stands.

"Me neither."

That's a mistake. She tenses. Flattens her palms against the fabric spread across her knees, and he wonders if she's really awake. If maybe she sleep walks and he wracks his brain trying to remember what to do for that.

_Sorry_. He takes a step toward her and sees her mouth is moving. Silent, like her breath is too shallow for sound. _Sorry._

"Nothing new," he says, trying to make it ok as he moves closer, one slow, careful step at a time. "I'm not . . . I'm usually up and about a couple of times a night. . ."

That's a mistake, too. In a different direction. She's more alert, suddenly. Embarrassed and swiping at her cheeks, even though they're dry.

"I'm in the way." She twists her hips. "I'll go . . . my . . ." Her eyes go wide at that. "The guest room."

" _Your_ room." It's too forceful. Too adamant. He's nothing but mistakes anyway, so he closes the gap between them in a single stride. Resigns himself to how clumsy he's being with this. "For as long as you need it. You know that."

He sinks next to her. He snatches at the coat, and she pulls back hard.

"Don't," she says through her teeth, still tugging. It's bizarrely satisfying. A spark of her—the real her—in it somehow. "Castle, _don't_."

"It's ruined already."

Her hands fly open as he says it. He's left with it. A bundled mess in his arms, and she's shutting down. Brittle and coming to pieces. He shoves it away from him. Kicks at it when it hits the floor, and gathers her up instead.

"It's just a _coat,_ Beckett."

He keeps a tight hold on her, his body tense. Stubborn. Nothing has seemed right since this started. Nothing until this. Now. Gathering her up and holding on, but he doesn't know what she'll do. He doesn't know if she'll break right here. If reaching for her like this—needing her every bit as much s he thinks she needs him—will be the last straw.

But she doesn't break. She doesn't run. He feels her hands uncurling. Splaying out over his thighs in this awkward bunch made up of the two of them. He breathes out hard, pushing away the smoke that clings to the fabric. Pushing away the terrible memory and taking in the scent of drugstore shampoo she wouldn't let him buy.

"Expensive." Her head is bowed. She says it practically into her own shoulder, and he almost misses it. "Had to be expensive."

"I guess?" He tries not to laugh. Half afraid he'll hurt her again. Embarrass her. Half afraid what it might open the door to if he _does_ laugh, when he's this frayed and she's not herself. "It doesn't matter."

"It's gone." She raises her face to his. Her hands creep up his sides like a wall she has to keep close to. Some kind of guide in a dark, unfamiliar place. She holds on to his shoulders when she gets there, like he might not be listening. Like she needs him to listen. "Everything's just . . . gone."

"Not everything." He brings his fingers to her heart. Feels the slender links of the chain under the thin fabric of her shirt and brushes them aside. Brushes aside the reminder of the life she lost. He presses his palm to the strong, steady beat under her ribs. "Not you." He leans in, unthinking, and kisses her. "Not you."

He kisses her again. Relief unfurling in him. A blessed kind of warmth in her mouth and breath and body.

"Castle."

His name is more a brush of lips than a word. Surprise in it. Not quite fear. Not quite panic, and that's a wonder, but wariness.

"Sorry," he says, his mouth still hovering near as he searches her face. "Should I be sorry for that?"

"I . . ."

Her lids flutter closed. Her fingers tighten at his shoulders. She's weary. Swaying with it, and however much he wants to go on kissing her until they're both old and grey, he hates that this is one more thing. His impulse piling on, though he badly wants an answer. He badly wants to know if he ought to pretend. If he even could, or if the stubbornness that brought his arms around her in the first place would win out. But it's one more thing, and he doesn't want to do that to her. He doesn't want to do that to _them._

"I'm tired," he says when there's nothing more from her. No answer other than her nearness. The fact that she hasn't run. He brushes the hair from her eyes. "Are you?"

He doesn't wait for an answer. He shifts, leaning back. He keeps hold of her with one hand and shuffles pillows and blankets with the other.

"Here." He lets his fingers slip from her shoulder. He lifts his arm, inviting. He pats the cushion beside him with his free hand. "Lie down. Just for a while."

She does. There's a long, teetering moment where she watches him. Where her eyes fall to the floor and her breath hitches at the sight of that _stupid_ coat. But she reaches out, balancing with one hand behind her as she swings her knees up. She's still a while. Breathing through it and stiff on her back, her feet flat on the cushion.

"A little while," she says, just before she shocks him silent.

She flops on to her side, facing him. Pulling his arm around her and letting her own hook around his hip. She rests her head high on his shoulder and wriggles a little, burrowing in. Her lips brush his cheek. The corner of his mouth. He holds his breath, wondering if she meant it. If it's an accident or an answer.

"Kate . . ."

He can't help it. It tumbles out, but she quiets him. She lifts her head—what little effort it takes like this—and kisses him. A small thing that lingers long enough that he doesn't have to wonder when she comes to rest against him. They drift off together, and he doesn't have to wonder.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry, sorry SORRY about the epilogue. This was ALL WRITTEN and my Brain is STUPID.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Here she is, looking down at the undeniable work of her own hands. A neat little scene she set with the weak light of a cold spring morning just touching the windows. Here she is. It wasn't a dream."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I suppose it's not an epilogue if it's longer than the first two chapters, but it's done now. Three-shot insert for Boom! (2 x18). I play a little bit with the ending. Nothing too major, but it does diverge from the episode.

 

* * *

 

She wonders if she dreamed it. When she's up and moving early the next morning, with more energy than she has any right to after a scant handful of hours with her eyes closed, it seems like it _must_ have been a dream.

There's a hot, delicious flush on her skin, and her rib cage feels like it's filled up with a hundred tiny winged things rising and falling in all directions. Even when she looks in the mirror and sees the bandage. When she sees borrowed clothes and remembers she's looking at the sum total of everything she can call hers right now. Even then, she's flushed and alight, and she wonders if she owes it all to a dream.

She's the first downstairs, and she can't help but comb the scene for evidence. A blanket folded just so, its corners carefully squared. Pillows righted and plumped. The ruined coat draped over the back of the armchair. Overthinking obvious in every detail.

She runs her fingers over that and falters. Feels something unpleasant rise as the smell of smoke clings to her skin, but it doesn't have the same power. Not in this spot. Not where she leaned over his warm, solid form and coaxed him awake—kind of awake—and managed to steer him in the direction of his bedroom before she climbed the stairs herself. Not where he pulled her sharply to him, just as she was going, and kissed her. Solidly and thoroughly kissed her.

_You''ll be here in the morning,_ he'd said, at once a demand and the kind of promise you make to a sleepy child. _You'll be here_.

And here she is, looking down at the undeniable work of her own hands. A neat little scene she set with the weak light of a cold spring morning just touching the windows. Here she is. It wasn't a dream.

* * *

 

It's awkward with Martha. For two seconds it is, because she's caught. She feels all of fifteen years old, but she's not. She's stammering to explain herself away and fighting a truly strange urge to bend her head toward Martha's and let slip the giddy news that she kissed a boy.

And then it's over. The awkwardness and the strange notion, gone all at once, because there he is. Too soon and not soon enough, he's shambling through the living room. Frowning at the scene. Blinking up at her with a smile spreading all through him.

It dims a little as he wakes. As the scent of coffee and bacon reach him. The reality of the day. It dims just a little and grows cautious as he nears the kitchen. Nears her, and she knows exactly what's going through his mind, beat for beat. Everything in her mirrored in him. She sees that flush of delight creep over him. The tiny frown that goes to war with it.

She sees him wondering if he dreamed it. Hoping he hasn't. Wondering again as his thoughts catch up to hers and they fall in step, delighted but cautious, because what are they now? What are they in the light of day with his mother and daughter _right there?_

She doesn't know. He doesn't either, but there's something easy in the way he bellies up to the counter. The way he pokes fun at Martha and Alexis and gives her the same wounded look he would have yesterday when she slaps his hand away from the bacon. It settles her. A little at least. It settles her to catch him stealing glances at her. To feel the familiar warmth of it on her cheeks and know that it's really no different. It's really no different at all.

She almost tells him. Not in those words, but her hands still and she feels quiet inside. Steady and whole and brimming. She leans toward him and almost finds her voice, low in her throat and just for the two of them.

_How'd you sleep,_ she thinks she'll ask, and she won't look away.

She almost does. Almost, but the phone rings.

Of course the phone rings.

* * *

 

They're ready in record time. It's no particular feat for her. Guilt sets a driving pace. Her morning routine is reduced to a drugstore spread already, and it's not as if she has any agonizing wardrobe decisions to face, but he's already pulling on a coat at the foot of the stairs as she descends.

"We don't know. We won't until we get there," she hears him say to Martha. To Alexis, and it sounds like it's far from the first time.

He looks up, frowning as she turns the last corner. Lines coming together at the bridge of his nose, and she startles as he reaches for her. For her jacket, she realizes after she's already initiated a clumsy side-step.

"Is this enough? It's freezing out there. Do you want . . .?" He half turns for the hall closet.

"Fine," she says sharply. It stiffens his shoulders. She sees Martha and Alexis exchange a look, and curses silently. "It's fine, Castle."

He nods once, chastened and not quite looking at her. She stands awkwardly on the fringe of things as he hugs them both in turn, lingering and saying something low in Alexis's ear that leaves the girl working on a brave kind of smile.

Martha snags Kate's wrist before she can edge any closer to the door. She tugs, pulling her into a no-arguments embrace.

"You'll be safe?" she murmurs, her eyes darting to Castle and back. "Both of you?"

She nods against the older woman's shoulder, her throat too tight for anything more, and then they're going. He's holding the door for her, silent, and she sees the strain around his eyes. Regret and worry that he's run afoul of some line of hers already.

She'd take it back. That stupid instant of sharpness. She glances up at him as she steps into the hall and wishes she could, but it's done. She puts her head down and sets one regretful foot in front of the other until he stops her. His hand on the door, double-checking that it's locked tight, he stops her with just the sound of her name.

"Kate."

She turns, empty of everything, save the sensation of weight. Downward motion in a quick spiral, all the worse for the contrast to how she woke today. She turns, though, and takes the hand he holds out to her without a second thought.

"It's not your fault." He stoops to find her eyes when she doesn't raise them to his. "It's not _our_ fault."

He doesn't say anything more, though she can see he'd like to. Words and more pent up in his body. She doesn't say anything at all, but she nods. She meets his eyes and borrows a little of his belief.

* * *

 

It never quite fades. The belief she borrows, though the hours that follow are some of the hardest she remembers. The most terrible, when she can't imagine asking him to follow her. When she can't imagine not having him backing her.

It never quite fades, and the day carries on, the strange, dream-like quality clinging to it. She watches him with something like fondness now as he weaves in and out of the stream of FBI people trying to leave. With something a little like jealousy when she hears Jordan Shaw's name again and again as his pen flies over the moleskine page.

It's a jolt when the woman herself appears, and the praise she offers does't feel quite as much like a pat on the head as it might have the day before. It's a jolt when she says out loud what everyone in Kate's world is so careful not to say. _Never_ to say.

_He cares about you, Kate. You may not see it. You may not be ready to. But he does._

It's enough of a jolt that a lie slips out. And a truth.

_Yeah, well, the situation with Castle is .. . complicated._

She peers down at her phone. At the unfortunate evidence that the world has carried on without her all day. That the details of her life won't wait for her to be ready to piece them together again.

Castle makes his goodbyes, and then it's just the two of them. Just the two of them and bullpen buzzing. A phone lying in wait. Ryan and Esposito a stone's throw away and too apt by half to break in at the worst possible time. But it's just the two of them.

"Are you . . ." He's brave enough at first that she knows how the question ends, even though he trails off.

_Are you coming home?_

_Yes._ It's what she wants to say. _Yes, I'm coming home_ , but the phone is heavy in her hand, and part of her—the wiser part of her that knows there's truth in what she told Jordan—thinks it's not good to start like this. Playing house, and going on in this dream-like way, though she wants to. She _wants_ to. And another part of her still, a _hopeful_ part that she's just getting to know, doesn't think they need to. That part thinks they'll do just fine in the real world. That they're doing just fine already.

She holds the phone out to him. He takes it, scowling a little as he pinch zooms the picture wider. As he flicks to the next one.

"Looks like a great place," he says, trying to mean it.

She nods. "Yeah. Just a temp, but my insurance agent . . . kind of a heroine."

"And it's . . ." He swallows hard and looks away. "All ready for you? Tonight?"

"No. Day after tomorrow. But my dad . . . "

She adds it quickly, then hates the way it sounds. Like she's moving away at speed, when she just didn't want him to misunderstand. She just wanted the band-aid off all at once. But she hates the way it sounds, even though he's nodding. Emphatic.

"Your dad. Of course."

"It's silly," she jumps in again. "Going all the way out there . . ." She trails off.

"No. I get that. Believe me, I get that." He closes his eyes briefly and opens them again to give her a smile. Small but it's not entirely work. He means it, and he's reaching down beside the chair. "You should have this then. Before you head out there."

He sets a bag on the desk. Tissue paper and rope handles. The name of a jeweler's shop in script so fancy she can hardly make it out and her heart stop for a wild second. He catches her eye, not quite laughing at her—too unsteady himself for that—but giving her a look that says he knows she knows.

"My father's watch. Thank you."

She hates the flatness of her own voice, but he's beaming, and maybe it just sounds flat to her. Maybe it's just that anything sounds flat compared with the feeling that wells up to press against her ribs.

"You're welcome. I found it in the wreckage, had it fixed."

"I have . . . " she stammers, a decision made in the moment, though she hadn't thought to do this now. Here. She hadn't thought to, but there will always be something. This will always be the backdrop to their story. "Come on, Castle."

She pushes up from her desk, confident without looking back that he's following. She pulls up short at the door to the locker room. She pokes her head in, and by some miracle it's empty. Quiet, and she seizes the moment. She grabs his hand and pulls him through the door.

She spins the dial of her locker with fingers that aren't quiet steady, grateful beyond telling when the silver handle gives on the first try. She raises up on her toes and slides the flat, crackling square of plastic from her arms to his. A dark navy windbreaker, almost, but not quite exactly like the one somebody had fished out of some trunk or other while her apartment burned.

"It's official." She thinks about it. "Probably illegal without part of the patches blacked out." He's silent, staring down at it, and she's not sure at all what that means. "Because . . . because I ruined yours."

He looks up at her then, excitement and a frown and that dream-like smile from the morning spreading all over him. Spreading between them as he holds on to the jacket. It crackles and slips between their bodies when he tugs her to him.

"Nothing's ruined," he says, his lips finding her hair. Her skin. The corner of her mouth. "Nothing."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading and for being kind about it having a third chapter; to those of you home that really annoys — I do apologize.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Second and final chapter up tomorrow. Sorry for this. Just one of the episodes that Brain is obsessed with.


End file.
